[9front] Big endian hardware.

[9front] Big endian hardware.

[Pär Moberg]

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Hello,
With NetBSD release of a Wii version and that they have a big endian
release for raspberry pi 1 to 3plus, I was wondering if there is any as
easily available hardware that run big endian and has a 9front port?
I have a fascination with big endian for some reason.
//Pär

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Re: [9front] Big endian hardware.

[Shawn Rutledge]

> On Mar 6, 2025, at 11:20, Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> With NetBSD release of a Wii version and that they have a big endian release for raspberry pi 1 to 3plus, I was wondering if there is any as easily available hardware that run big endian and has a 9front port?
> I have a fascination with big endian for some reason. 
> //Pär 

An old powermac maybe?  I have a G5 at the office for testing Qt on big-endian on Linux (not that I get around to it very often): it’s fine for that sort of thing, and those machines aren’t worth much anymore, despite being quite the beasts of their time.  And you can google and find out about the Plan 9 PPC porting, discussion about Power9 and so on.

It’s good that one endian won though, IMO, so maybe we can eventually forget about “network byte order” being big-endian, and stop flipping bytes around pointlessly, especially in new protocols.  9p is little-endian (from what I read): that seems like a good choice.

Re: [9front] Big endian hardware.

[Jacob Moody]

On 3/6/25 04:20, Pär Moberg wrote:
> Hello,
> With NetBSD release of a Wii version and that they have a big endian release for raspberry pi 1 to 3plus, I was wondering if there is any as easily available hardware that run big endian and has a 9front port?
> I have a fascination with big endian for some reason. 
> //Pär 

The power9 port I am working on (for the Raptor Computing Talos II) will be big endian only.
If you can emulate an SGI Indy that would work, but its really not a pleasant experience.

I've scoped out porting 9front to the PowerPC Nintendo consoles, and I think the WiiU would be
an amicable target, just haven't gotten around to it.

Thanks,
moody

Re: [9front] Big endian hardware.

[adventures in9]

I did a port of 9Front to some Atheros/Qualcomm big endian Mips router
chips.  To use it you either need to find an old router that uses
them, or there are a few companies on Aliexpress that sell development
boards.

https://github.com/adventuresin9/9front-qca9558
https://github.com/adventuresin9/9front-qca9531

On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 9:14 AM Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/6/25 04:20, Pär Moberg wrote:
> > Hello,
> > With NetBSD release of a Wii version and that they have a big endian release for raspberry pi 1 to 3plus, I was wondering if there is any as easily available hardware that run big endian and has a 9front port?
> > I have a fascination with big endian for some reason.
> > //Pär
>
> The power9 port I am working on (for the Raptor Computing Talos II) will be big endian only.
> If you can emulate an SGI Indy that would work, but its really not a pleasant experience.
>
> I've scoped out porting 9front to the PowerPC Nintendo consoles, and I think the WiiU would be
> an amicable target, just haven't gotten around to it.
>
> Thanks,
> moody
>

Re: [9front] Big endian hardware.

[Pär Moberg]

On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 at 18:15, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/6/25 04:20, Pär Moberg wrote:
> > Hello,
> > With NetBSD release of a Wii version and that they have a big endian release for raspberry pi 1 to 3plus, I was wondering if there is any as easily available hardware that run big endian and has a 9front port?
> > I have a fascination with big endian for some reason.
> > //Pär
>
> The power9 port I am working on (for the Raptor Computing Talos II) will be big endian only.
> If you can emulate an SGI Indy that would work, but its really not a pleasant experience.

Nice. 👍

> I've scoped out porting 9front to the PowerPC Nintendo consoles, and I think the WiiU would be
> an amicable target, just haven't gotten around to it.

fyi. One of the problems with the Wii U is that its internal storage
chip is slowly dying if it stays unpowered
for too long. I think standby (powered off but connected to power) is
fine as it keeps the flash refreshed in the background.

> Thanks,
> moody
>

Re: [9front] Big endian hardware.

[Jacob Moody]

On 3/6/25 12:50, Pär Moberg wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 at 18:15, Jacob Moody <moody@posixcafe.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 3/6/25 04:20, Pär Moberg wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> With NetBSD release of a Wii version and that they have a big endian release for raspberry pi 1 to 3plus, I was wondering if there is any as easily available hardware that run big endian and has a 9front port?
>>> I have a fascination with big endian for some reason.
>>> //Pär
>>
>> The power9 port I am working on (for the Raptor Computing Talos II) will be big endian only.
>> If you can emulate an SGI Indy that would work, but its really not a pleasant experience.
> 
> Nice. 👍
> 
>> I've scoped out porting 9front to the PowerPC Nintendo consoles, and I think the WiiU would be
>> an amicable target, just haven't gotten around to it.
> 
> fyi. One of the problems with the Wii U is that its internal storage
> chip is slowly dying if it stays unpowered
> for too long. I think standby (powered off but connected to power) is
> fine as it keeps the flash refreshed in the background.
> 

Good to know, I haven't heard of this issue yet.

If you're interested in picking up any ppc32 port let me know, I would be happy to assist.
It's on my list to get to this at some point, just fairly far down.


Thanks,
moody